About Writer’s Corner

BookFest St. Louis celebrates the city’s active contemporary art scene as well as its rich literary history.

Writer’s Corner, located at the intersection of Euclid and McPherson in St. Louis’ Central West End, highlights that history with busts of renowned authors and one-time CWE residents Tennessee Williams, T. S. Eliot and Kate Chopin occupying three of the intersection’s four corners.

The project began in 2007, when the Central West End Association commissioned a sculpture of playwright Tennessee Williams by St. Louis artist Harry Weber. The sculptor is known for his dramatic bronze sculptures, which embody action with a style developed from a lifetime of sketching. Williams was followed by Eliot (2010, by Vlad Zhitomirsky) and Chopin (2012, by Jaye Gregory). A fourth sculpture, of Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs, is planned for the fourth and final corner.

The Writer’s Corner project seeks to raise awareness about these celebrated writers, and their ties to St. Louis and the Central West End — ties that many are unaware of.

In an interview with the Kate Chopin International Society, sculptor Jaye Gregory spoke enthusiastically of her work on the Chopin bust: “Reading her works gives one an impression of a woman of tremendous compassion, a strong sense of irony, and a great sense of humor; reading about her life and the era in which she wrote, one realizes that there must also have been a great strength of character. And, of course, I wanted all that in the bust!”